Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson Interview

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Spy Hunter, smackdowns, and gimmick controllers.

By Jon Robinson

I remember back in the day, being backstage at a WWE event and I'm playing Knockout Kings against The Rock. One on one with The Great One, and I'm beating The People's Champ into a bloody and bruised polygon. Rock keeps looking at me pressing the buttons and starts yelling "My controller is broken. Why did you give The Rock a gimmick controller?" I'm laughing, thinking he's making excuses for losing, but he's starting to really look mad. I knock him out, he throws down the controller and starts to cut a promo on me. All I remember is it had something to do with monkey piss, the Smackdown Hotel, and piles of steaming camel crap, but the point is, the game was over.

Later on, we're eating at the buffet WWE setup for its stars, and Rock is still complaining about his controller. He tells me he never loses at videogames. How he beat Mark Henry in a game of Madden, and in the process, won Henry's European belt off him in a bet. Sexual Chocolate even had to walk out on Raw as champ without the belt until he could get his game right and beat Rock at Madden to win it back (they don't track this title change on WWE.com, but it's a true story).

Anyway, I go home after the event and plug in my PlayStation. Time for some more Knockout Kings. Only thing is, when I start hitting the buttons, the controller isn't working. I look down, and it's the same controller Rock was using. He really was using a gimmick controller and I had no idea. No wonder I knocked him out so fast.

To this day, I never told him how I beat him (so if you're reading this Rock, I guess I owe you a rematch).

These days, the former football player turned wrestler turned movie star is still playing games, and is ready to star in a new game based off a movie based off a videogame. Follow that?

The Rock is starring in Spy Hunter, the Victor/Victoria of videogame licenses, as the star of both the movie and the action beat-em-up.

We had a chance to talk old times and new games recently over the phone.

Luckily for me, the whole broken controller thing was never brought up.

IGN Sports: I heard you kicked some serious ass at the motion-capture session for the new Spy Hunter game. What did you put those poor stunt guys through?

The Rock: Big-time ass whuppin'. [laughs] I wanted to be creative with the game and I knew the developers over at Midway were going to create a Spy Hunter game that was not only going to compete with the most fun games out there, it's going to kick ass on screen visually. The graphics, the storyline, everything is on point. My responsibility was to bring a mode of action you had never seen before. Of course, I have an array of weapons that I use, and that's cool, but other videogame characters use weapons. I thought, how can I creatively maim and bring death upon someone with my own two hands. [laughs] So I had my stunt double, my cousin who I have with me on all my movies, and we went through a variety of moves to try and create a big H.S. moment&#Array;a big holy sh!t moment. [laughs] Then what I did, I took a lot of the wrestling moves I used to do from The Rock Bottom to the Jackknife. In the game, though, when I do a Jackkife, instead of bringing my opponent down twisting and turning on his back, I throw him straight down like a Death Valley Driver straight down on his head. It's the greatest. I took a lot of those moves that you would find in Japanese wrestling, but instead of protecting the guy, like I would do in wrestling, I would bring them straight down on their heads and try to break their necks. It's awesome. I had to go out and buy my stunt double a lot of meals after that.

IGN Sports: Did you drop the People's Elbow from the roof of the car?

The Rock: No, none of that because the minute you start dropping The People's Elbow or something like that, I didn't want to take the player out of the game. There's still a way in combat to do a Rock Bottom, only through something. There's a way to do all of these moves that look visually stunning while you're breaking necks.

IGN Sports: How did you like strutting around in the black spandex mo-cap suit?

The Rock: That's my favorite suit. I had to be in the spandex suit for hours. There were a lot of ladies lined up watching, and they all realized why they call me The Rock. There were three dudes standing by too, but I don't know what that deal was. [laughs]